Simulated reality. Simulated reality is the hypothesis that reality could be simulated—for example by computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality.
It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation. This is quite different from the current, technologically achievable concept of virtual reality. Virtual reality is easily distinguished from the experience of actuality; participants are never in doubt about the nature of what they experience. Simulated reality, by contrast, would be hard or impossible to separate from "true" reality. There has been much debate over this topic, ranging from philosophical discourse to practical applications in computing.
Types of simulation[edit] Brain-computer interface[edit] Virtual people[edit] In a virtual-people simulation, every inhabitant is a native of the simulated world. Arguments[edit] Simulation argument[edit] 1. 2. 3. The Digital Universe Directory. Thomas Campbell's "My Big Toe" Zuse's Thesis - Zuse hypothesis - Algorithmic Theory of Everything - Digital Physics, Rechnender Raum (Computing Space, Computing Cosmos) - Computable Universe - The Universe is a Computer - Theory of Everything.
Konrad Zuse (1910-1995; pronounce: "Conrud Tsoosay") not only built the first programmable computers (1935-1941) and devised the first higher-level programming language (1945), but also was the first to suggest (in 1967) that the entire universe is being computed on a computer, possibly a cellular automaton (CA).
He referred to this as "Rechnender Raum" or Computing Space or Computing Cosmos. Many years later similar ideas were also published / popularized / extended by Edward Fredkin (1980s), Jürgen Schmidhuber (1990s - see overview), and more recently Stephen Wolfram (2002) (see comments and Edwin Clark's review page ). Zuse's first paper on digital physics and CA-based universes was: Zuse is careful: on page 337 he writes that at the moment we do not have full digital models of physics, but that does not prevent him from asking right there: which would be the consequences of a total discretization of all natural laws? Digital physics. Digital physics is grounded in one or more of the following hypotheses; listed in order of decreasing strength.
The universe, or reality: History[edit] The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was pioneered by Konrad Zuse in his book Rechnender Raum (translated into English as Calculating Space). The term digital physics was first employed by Edward Fredkin, who later came to prefer the term digital philosophy.[3] Others who have modeled the universe as a giant computer include Stephen Wolfram,[4] Juergen Schmidhuber,[5] and Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft.[6] These authors hold that the apparently probabilistic nature of quantum physics is not necessarily incompatible with the notion of computability. Quantum versions of digital physics have recently been proposed by Seth Lloyd,[7] David Deutsch, and Paola Zizzi.[8] Overview[edit] Some try to identify single physical particles with simple bits.
Weizsäcker's ur-alternatives[edit] Wheeler's "it from bit"[edit] DigitalPhilosophy.org > Home.